Almost a year has passed since Parliament voted against British involvement in a possible military strike against Syria, thereby forestalling an attack planned by the Americans in retaliation for the use of chemical weapons. Whether that action would have drawn the West into the civil war and an early confrontation with the jihadi forces of Islamic State (IS) is impossible to know. But at the time the vote seemed to symbolise a desire to stay out of any further military involvement in the region’s affairs. Gradually we are being drawn back into this ghastly imbroglio, though, by the force of events.

The Americans are using air power to degrade IS units threatening genocide against the Yazidi people and in support of Kurdish fighters defending their autonomous enclave in northern Iraq. Britain has so far pledged only humanitarian assistance, but may yet be called upon to provide air cover for the Iraqi minorities threatened by the jihadi fighters. The whole region is in ferment, with a possible threat to Jordan the real nightmare scenario, drawing Israel into the wider conflict. The geopolitical tectonic plates are moving, as they often do in August despite its depiction as the “silly season”. Inevitably, our parliamentarians are away just when the implications of events in the region need to be debated.

It is almost an annual ritual for someone to demand the recall of Parliament, usually over some trifling matter that does not merit it. But this does. In the recent past, MPs have been summoned back in the summer to debate Syria’s use of chemical weapons (last year); Iraq (in 2003); the 9/11 attacks (2001); and the invasion of Kuwait (1990). There is a pattern here that current events clearly match. Before any military commitments are made, therefore, Parliament needs to have its say.